Wars and skirmishes, they aren’t what they used to be. I remember the good ol’ days when battles were fought with guns and swords, and more recently with nuclear stand-offs. Now it seems that Russia or atleast some of its citizens are fighting online. Most “wars” that occur in an online setting generally happen in a forum. Just go to a movie forum and read some of the posts for on-going Matrix vs. Lord Of The Rings discussions and you’ll see what I mean. Of course the Russia-Georgia conflict is more important than movie arguments; and the online battle has gotten more serious as well. For some information on the conflict, visit USA Today’s article here.

What started as hate speech against Georgia on a Russian based site has turned into DDoS attacks against some Georgian government websites. ZDNet has coverage on the happening, and it really is some crazy hacker shenanigans. The attacks have been going on for awhile now, even before the conflict has caught fire, ““Several Georgian state computer servers have been under external control since shortly before Russia’s intervention into the state commenced on Friday, leaving its online presence in dissaray.”

The attacks have gotten so bad that the Georgian sites that have been hacked; have switched servers. These sites are now on American servers based in Atlanta, GA. A hosting company there is owned by a Georgian-born citizen (I bet it gets annoying telling people where you’re from…I couldn’t resist), offered to transfer the sites to her own servers.

Georgian hackers have been trying to retaliate. But Russian hackers have actually locked out Georgia’s most popular hacker discussion forum.

This whole fiasco has really left Georgia in a sense of confusion. For many people, going onto these various sites have been their main form of information. The sites have gone from being defaced (pictures of the Georgian leader next to Hitler), to being completely made inaccessible. On top of switching servers, many sites have resorted to blogging sites to release news.

This whole mess just goes to show how the world is changing; specifically on how information is traded. Who would have thought that hackers could cause such damage, especially to a country that’s in a dire situation. Maybe we should hack into Osama’s site, and put up an American flag, with a picture of Kenny Roger’s photoshopped over his face. Hackers, get to it.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 12th, 2008 at 7:09 am and is filed under Internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.